The two Saudi Arabian dialects, Ghamdi and Zahrani Arabic (henceforth referred to as GA and ZA), have not received much attention linguistically. The current study provides a descriptive account of several aspects of the phonology of the aforementioned dialects. This study centers on three main topics. First, it describes stress assignment and shows regional variation of both dialects. It is shown that syllable weight, geminates as well as suffixation play significant roles in attracting stress in GA and ZA. Second, it deals with some deletion processes occurring in GA and ZA. Due to a language rule, it exhibits that word-final long vowels and geminates can be affected by final weight reduction. Also, it discusses and probes a phonological phenomenon of compensatory lengthening in the definite article of Arabic /ʔal-/ in ZA, which has never as yet been the subject of linguistic investigation before. It also analyzes cases of compensatory lengthening due to the deletion of the glottal stop /ʔ/ word-internally. And, as in many Arabic varieties, it also shows that /ʔ/ is deleted word-finally. Third, it sheds light on various cases of regressive and progressive assimilation. In particular, it investigates some assimilatory processes resulting from the interaction with some prefixes. It shows that root-initial consonants undergo assimilation with prefixes in GA and ZA. Finally, it shows that a prefixal vowel can also undergo vowel harmony when a prefix attaches to the root. The principal goals of this study are to enrich Arabic dialectology in general and Saudi Arabian Arabic dialectology in particular through examining data from two dialects spoken in a southwestern region in Saudi Arabia, Albaha region, and also to study and present phonological issues of GA and ZA that have not been under previous research or analysis in the literature.

This thesis aimed to investigate the impact of adult attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on the perception and identification of lexical tones. Eleven participants were asked to listen to and identify four different pitch contours: high to low, high to mid, low to high, and low to mid. Seven of the participants did not have ADHD and four had been formally diagnosed before their participation. Results showed that the ADHD group performed better than the non-ADHD group overall, and that the ADHD group improved in the second half whereas the non-ADHD group did not.

This thesis gives a phonological representation of the Mandarin Chinese Neutral tone (T0) within disyllabic sequences using Optimality Theory, morphology, and semantic structure. This thesis states that T0 in Mandarin is caused by a phenomenon called Loss of Coda Licensing, which states that codas of non-head syllables that have a low semantic influence on the disyllabic sequence lose their ability to associate with a tone, causing the syllable to become a T0 syllable. To experience Loss of Coda Licensing, non-head syllables are evaluated for their semantic influence and subsequently placed into two categories: high influence and low influence. Low-influence syllables are then placed into one of five categories, with each category containing a phonological constraint that affects the syllable's coda to license a tone. This thesis utilizes Optimality Theory to posit a phonological representation that shows, like Mandarin's four lexical tones, that T0 is also a tone, even if it is shorter in length than the lexical tones. This thesis's phonological representation shows that a T0's Tone differs from that of a lexical tone because T0's Tone depends on the preceding lexical syllable's coda tone. The implications of this thesis are that tonal realization within disyllabic sequences depends on semantic contributions, that T0 syllables contain a coda that cannot license a tone, and that non-head syllables can be categorized within Chinese.

Southern United States English (SUSE) is North America’s most stigmatizedregionalized dialect, leading to generational decline and underrepresentation from characters in primetime television. This study explores the representation of SUSE features by 80 local news broadcasters in eight Southern affiliates, all outside major metropolises. This sociophonetic study surveys the PIN-PEN merger and Stages I and II of the Southern Vowel Shift (SVS) — /aɪ/ glide weakening and /e/-/ɛ/ proximity. The PIN-PEN merger was found to be widespread among broadcasters, with 49/80 (61%) having a PIN-PEN Pillai score less than 0.3, considered “merged”. /aɪ/ glide weakening was subtly present, despite being a marked SUSE feature: /aɪ/ was overwhelmingly diphthongal, but the median and Q3 variants (measured in Euclidean distance from 20% to 80% duration) ended in the lower half of the vowel space, showing a general lack of glide raising. Lastly, /e/-/ɛ/ proximity had marginal representation: Only 11/80 (14%) broadcasters had a non-sonorant /e/-/ɛ/ Pillai score less than 0.45, and the median Pillai score was 0.664, establishing that an advanced SVS is not typical. The best predictors for the PIN-PEN merger were attending a Southern college, being African American, and being male — all factors of socialization. Contrastingly, the (mutually exclusive) best predictors of /aɪ/ glide weakening were more products of stylization — occupational role and the subregion that hired the broadcaster (whether the audience was a ‘Deep South’ market). For /e/-/ɛ/ proximity, the interaction of gender and Southern college attendance was statistically significant, as only men with Southern college backgrounds generally had this apparently stigmatized feature. Age was not found to be significant for any feature, subverting expectations that younger speakers keep SUSE at ‘arm’s length’. TV market size was impactful for each feature but repeatedly (narrowly) missed the p=0.05 threshold for statistical significance. Sports anchors led in SUSE forms for each feature, showing SUSE as an asset; investigative reporters, however, had the least SUSE /aɪ/ and /e/-/ɛ/ variants. Gender had strong explanatory power for each feature, inferring that men tended to ‘lean in’ to SUSE’s positive solidarity traits, but women tended to incorporate SUSE less often due to its negative competency traits.

The purpose of this thesis is to identify the ways neurodivergent people engage with tone and intent, in spaces where the expression of such things is missing the audible and visual cues that exist in face-to-face communications. Interviews were conducted with four participants who self-identify as neurodivergent, with each of the interviews seeking to understand their experiences with the written expression of tone and intent. The interviews shed light on how direct, semi-direct, and indirect tone indicators are used as tools for understanding the intent and tone of a message, as well as which of the three types of tone indicators are the most helpful in practice. The interviews also touched on how social interactions in digital spaces are often viewed through a neurotypical lens, and thus make understanding the sociolinguistic rules of digitally-based interactions difficult for neurodivergent individuals who are expected to know said rules without being told. Through the course of the interviews, participants expressed a desire for people as whole to be clearer about their tone and intent when communicating in digital spaces, and that tone indicators are vital for communicating such things.

This dissertation presents a minimalist account of null arguments in Maybrat. Different generative theories have been put forward for conditions that trigger the appearance of null subjects in a number of languages. There have been two general lines of position since Perlmutter's initial identification of null subjects in some European languages. The first posits that null subjects (pro) appear in languages with a rich agreement paradigm, known as the rich agreement hypothesis. The second argues that rich agreement is not attested in other languages. It suggests that discourse context triggers the appearance of null pronouns. This study was based on the descriptive analysis of 18 stories gathered from the fieldwork and corpus of Maybrat spoken texts. It claims that the two approaches may not fully explain the appearance of null arguments in Maybrat for three respects. First, the null subjects appear in the clauses that both have agreement and no agreement. Second, not all verbs with agreement markers are fully specified in person, number, or gender features (φ-features). Third, objects are also dropped freely in many contexts despite the lack of agreement. Building on the minimalist framework of Agree, the dissertation proposes the derivation of pro in two ways. First, the Tense (T) head is strong in φ-features and pro is a Determiner Phrase (DP). They participate in a local Agree relation. Second, pro is weak in definite feature (D-feature) and the functional head T is deficient for lacking φ-features. The Agree relation can operate if T inherits the features from the Complementizer (C) head. Thus, a long-distance Agree between C and pro is assumed. This dissertation concludes that the appearance of null arguments in Maybrat is licensed either by the agreement head, the discourse context, or a combination of the two conditions. However, among the three conditions, discourse context plays a significant role in promoting the null arguments since pro appears regardless of the verbal agreement inflections. For this reason, this dissertation also proposes that Maybrat may be classified as a radical pro-drop language.

Natural languages go through two major cycles in their diachronic change. A high synthetic marking characterizes the first cycle, and a high analytic marking characterizes the second. This thesis investigates an emerging analytic passive in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), representing the analytic cycle. This construction is designated periphrastic passive since two grammatical morphemes mark the passiveness. The older morphological passive construction in Classical Arabic (CA) and MSA, representing the synthetic cycle, is juxtaposed with the periphrastic passive. Given the inconsistent passive characterization in the literature, the comparison between the two passive forms is couched in the prototypical passive analysis. This thesis seeks to show that the periphrastic passive in MSA has grammaticalized to perform the passive function. It argues that the main verb in the periphrastic passive, i.e., tamma/yatimmu, has grammaticalized to a passive auxiliary. The corpus data of CA and MSA about tamma/yatimmu complementation, the subjectverb agreement, and the frequency of tamma/yatimmu show the grammaticalization of the periphrastic passive. The lexical source of the auxiliary tamma/yatimmu, i.e., ‘finish,’ is also attested to perform the passive function in Colloquial Icelandic (CI). The commonality between the lexical sources in the two passive constructions in MSA and CI suggests that the lexical source ‘finish’ could serve as a lexical source of passive constructions.

Gibberish seems to have a universal comedic appeal that transcends language barriers – Youtube sensation Crazy Frog goes “bing-ding,” stop-motion penguin Pingu goes “noot-noot,” and Chilean street clown Karcocha speaks in whistle. Clowns don’t need language to make people laugh – Charlie Chaplin did it silently – but what if their gibberish meant something? Intrigued, I sought to explore a species of clowns and how their naturalistic language could evolve the hoots and honks of clown gibberish through naturalistic processes of grammaticalization. First, I evolved a base language (which is not “clown-ish” in itself). Then, I modified the whistled register used by shepherds (not unlike Hmong and Silbo Gomero) into a clown register, which hides the true meaning of jokes in a series of whistles (to encode tone) and other sound effects (to encode consonants). Combined with a clownish subspecies of sapiens and a culture built around “facepaint as self” and humor as a leveling mechanism, this constructed language is vividly clownish. My ultimate intent is to demonstrate the limitless possibility of language change through a detailed, yet silly lens.

The purpose of this thesis is to provide an in-depth examination of the syntactic rules and pragmatic structures that govern the construction of Thai nominal phrases. There is a current debate among linguistic researchers of the Thai language (and others within the Tai-Kadai family) contemplating whether the inherent syntactic structure of nominal phrases projects a Determiner Phrase [DP] or a Noun Phrase [NP] (Birmingham, 2020; Jenks, 2011; Piriyawiboon, 2010; and Singhapreecha, 2001). An examination of the grammatical and pragmatic features that dictate the formation of Thai nominals, as well as an investigation of the prevailing linguistic theories focused on nominal phrase construction supporting each structure, has been conducted and is presented within this thesis. This extensive research, performed to address the dilemma “Does the Thai language project a DP or an NP?”, has resulted in the conclusion that the Thai language, with its free word-order and its fascinating pragmatic structures, projects an underlying NP phrase structure that allows for an optional determiner, used to indicate specificity.

Temporal features and frequency of pauses have been studied extensively in the literature, but the interest in the syntactic location of pauses is a more recent development. While previous research has studied the pause patterns of L1 and L2 speakers as well as the effects of pause location on perceptions of fluency, these studies have all utilized a binary approach the categorization of pauses as occurring either between or within clauses or major constituent boundaries. This research attempts to take a look at pause placement with a finer distinction of pause location, including junctures that occur between and within phrases. To accomplish this, two experiments were conducted. The first experiment gathered read-aloud speech samples from native, non-native, and heritage speakers of Mandarin Chinese, which were then manipulated in Praat to contain only a single pause that occurred either between or within phrases. The samples were presented to native Chinese speakers to assess for perceptions of fluency as affected by the pause location condition. Findings of this preliminary pilot study did not find a significant correlation between pause location and perceptions of fluency at the phrasal level. The second experiment gathered spontaneous speech samples from the same speaker population as Experiment 1. The pauses that occurred in the samples were coded according to a system developed by the author to account for eight different syntactic junctions, and the percentage of pause at each location was calculated. Analysis showed a significant correlation with pause location and percentage of pauses (p < 0.01), as well as a statistically significant interaction between the effects of speaker status and pause location on percentage of pause (p = 0.011). The findings of this study are limited due to the small population size, but research in this fine-grained analysis of pause location within a clause has implications in the fields of L2 acquisition, psycholinguistics, and natural language processing.